


As Bad As Each Other

by wreathed



Category: In the Loop (2009), The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Awkward Sexual Situations, Bickering, Cambridge, Cheating, Closet Sex, Crossover, Doppelganger, Drunkenness, Embarrassment, Flirting, Hand Jobs, Humor, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Oxford, Phone Calls & Telephones, Porn With Plot, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-28
Updated: 2010-10-28
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:54:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A meeting of two (very) similar minds; endless mediocre sarcasm abounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Bad As Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by _breathtaken. This was written before _The Missing Dosac Files_ was released, and so makes no mention of them. Set some time during Series Three (pre-Fleming).

Ollie’s been patiently listening to Nicola exasperatingly berating him over the phone for ten harassed, appalling minutes before he at last leaves the café (sandwich and latte paid for and in hand), enters the busy atrium and, amongst all those other faces, sees him. It distracts him entirely from anything else.

Unfortunately, the man he’s staring at looks up from tapping away at _his_ phone at that same precise moment, and their eyes meet.

“No, no, Nicola, just because I went quiet for a few sec- I _was_ listening, just...run past that last bit again.”

Ollie runs his fingers through his hair, quickly breaks the creepy mutual stare they’d somehow got themselves trapped into and resumes his conversation, but he finds he just can’t quite turn his back on the bit of glassy, glossy Portcullis House that the man is currently leaning against in a rather intriguing fashion. He’s returned to frowning at his mobile, fingers stabbing the screen as if each touch-sensitive square centimetre has personally offended him, but every now and again – particularly upon the rare occasions when it’s Ollie’s turn to speak in the rather one-sided conversation he’s presently engaged in – the man just looks up and _stares_.

It’s very disconcerting.

But not as disconcerting as the fact that the man, whoever he fucking is, is Ollie’s doppelgänger.

He’s wearing different clothes (although they could have been taken from Ollie’s wardrobe) and there _must_ be a couple of ways they didn’t look identical, but apart from that that Ollie feels as if he’s peering at himself in a mirror.

 _Same phone, too,_ Ollie notes wildly. _Although two people owning iPhones in Westminster is hardly much of a fucking coincidence._

Eventually the conversation-cum-bollocking ends when Ollie assures Nicola that, yes, he will get onto Terri right the fuck now, and she will inform Press, and no-one else will disturb Nicola Murray this afternoon because this Mumsnet chat might be the most important thing she’s done this week, and she wishes she was kidding about that, but she’s really not.

Pocketing his iPhone, Ollie makes to leave. Until he finds he’s being approached by his clone and finds that, although perturbed, he’s too fascinated to consider doing anything but staying put.

The man’s steps are clear and sharp on the vast, shining floor, and in no time at all he’s standing right in front of Ollie and proffering his right hand.

“Toby Wright,” he says, in a voice that is irritatingly similar to his own – or rather, Ollie realises, how others must hear him. How nauseating.

“Ollie Reeder,” he replies as they shake hands. “Social Affairs and Citizenship.” He draws out the words in a well-practiced way that makes himself sound more blasé, makes the name of the department seem longer, more important.

Then they just stare at each other.

“I’ve heard good things about you,” Toby says to break this awkward silence of their – no, _Toby’s_ , damnit – own bloody creation.

 _No you haven’t,_ Ollie thinks. _The only thing people know about me is that I’m giving one to the opposition. Except I’m not, because we haven’t shagged since...don’t think about that now._ “Oh?” he says.

“Yes,” Toby replies, then twists his expression into an awkward, patronising smile and runs his fingers nervously against the back of his neck. Ollie watches their self-conscious curl. “Impressive for someone saddled with that department. Not exactly punching, uh, not exactly punching above your weight, are you?”

“What by far superior calling are you answering to, then?” Ollie asks, now growing slightly irritated by this dickhead that seemed to have nothing better to do than waste his hotly in-demand time. “Love or money? DCSF or Treasury?”

“International Development,” Toby replies. “Actually, I’m just off now to a meeting with Sir Timothy Richards himself. You ever get to meet him down in your fancy PFI?”

“Haven’t actually met him, no,” Ollie says flatly. “But I bet you haven’t met, oh, I don’t know, my very good friend John Truscott – yeah! – from health? . And government would _cease to function_ without DoSAC,” Ollie says, so convincingly he almost believes it himself. “So,” he continues. “Why are you still here, with this busy schedule of yours? It was nice meeting you and all that,” he then adds, sounding like a not-altogether-convincing afterthought – if a minister bid farewell to their public like that, Malcolm would be livid.

“Actually, yeah, I’ve got to go now but I – I thought we could do something later on,” Toby says and, Jesus, is that berk _smiling_ at him, looking sly with one sidesweep of his eyes? “Drink? It’s absolutely for no other reason than work. Networking.”

“Is it?” Ollie means for his tone to be sarcastic, but maybe he’s talking sense. “You were staring at me for about ten minutes before you even came up to introduce yourself like some slightly star-struck spaniel-”

“I was staring at you because you look _exactly, freakishly like me_. Not because I’m interested in your,” – Toby gesticulates, then grimaces – “your penis.”

Ollie feels slightly taken aback. “Well, trust me, that feeling’s mutual. Don’t you worry about that.”

Toby laughs. “And why should I be the star-struck one? I’m not stuck in the department of anti-littering campaigns and being nice to old ladies. You should be _begging_ for an audience with me.”

“I think I’m above begging, thanks,” Ollie tells him through a tight smile, as the arrogant twat smirks at him and, to his buggering dismay, he finds himself pushing _thoughts_ aside. Ones he hasn’t had for a long time. And once a thought gets in his head – whether that thought is regarding the integration of education review authorities (a policy folder personal favourite), or whether that thought is of saying yes to anything ( _anything_ ) the chairman of CULC asks of you when you’re just the lowly first year publicity officer – it’s difficult for Ollie to forget about it.

He makes himself think about tits. (Not incompetent ministers, or incompetent civil servants. Actual breasts.)

“How’s eight thirty at Zander’s? No begging required, I promise. I’ll even throw in some olives.”

Both compete to be the most tech-savvy as they hurriedly swap phones and type in their own numbers (“I don’t see why iPhones can’t Bluetooth each other”, Ollie says, and Toby says “tell me about it”, grinning), before they profess to each other an unprecedented need and desire to return to grindstone.

As Toby’s walking away, his phone rings. “Hi, darling. I’m fine, yes,” Toby mutters into the handset, and then he exits through security and glass doors and Ollie doesn’t catch the rest.

*

“Suspicious,” Glenn tells him back at the office. “Why would International Development need anything from DoSAC? He’s got far higher up the greasy pole than you have.”

“Glenn–”

“International Development, tch! He’ll be adopted by Dan’s parents and promoted to third Miller brother before you know it.”

“Figures they’d want a second reserve,” Ollie replies. “But what can he want? He thinks I’m a waste of space. If I’m a waste of space, then _he’s_ a waste of space. He’s not much better. It’s International Development, Glenn, not the bloody Foreign Office. I bet he can’t even speak French.”

“Definitely suspicious. We don’t really need to even correspond with them. Assorted bits of social injustice, that’s our remit. _British_ social injustice. We don’t have to try and sort out anyone else’s mess.”

“So, we’ve established that our remits don’t overlap. And that his is bigger.”

“I’m sure his is,” and Ollie visibly winces at the innuendo, at Glenn trying to sound salacious. “Just make sure he has you back by midnight and you don’t put out ‘til the third date.”

Ollie grabs the nearest folder of Nottinghamshire crimes stats (vol. #16: April 1996 – March 1997) and hits him. It’s not an especially sophisticated form of enforcement, but it does succeed in shutting him up.

*

The bar is admittedly, perhaps, slightly akin to one that one might take a date.

(In fact, Ollie’s pretty sure he went here once with Angela back when they were going out, but lets his brain wonder down that route no longer.)

“Right, then,” Ollie says, sitting gangilly on a trendy bar stool. “And don’t think I’m staying later than nine thirty.”

“Drink? I’ll have a glass of white, ta.”

Ollie childishly sticks two fingers to him, but honours the order anyway when finally served. And then they talk.

*

“Sounds like you’re doing alright,” Toby says of Ollie’s tales of DoSAC cock-ups. “International’s an absolute mess right now. Invading Qumranistan screwed us over.”

“How did you get into Development, then?” Ollie asks.

“I don’t know _how_ the fuck I got there in the first place,” Toby tells him quietly, his finger tracing the rim of his wine glass. “But I got kicked out after my minister did. Went back to sodding Defra and then, two years and three ministers later, I got back in to the same department I’d been in before. Through a subtle and skilled style of subterfuge.”

“Really. Perhaps you’d be better off in MI6, then. With that kind of breathtakingly subtle cleverness.”

“Fuck you,” Toby wittily replies.

*

“Are we secretly related? I mean,” and Ollie gestures between them, “the fuck?”

Toby laughs, to Ollie’s mild gratification. (It’s far too often the case that Glenn and Emma and, hell, anyone else he encounters, don’t laugh at his jokes. The bastards.) “You know how much this noble profession is filled with identikits. Neither of us are exactly filling quotas for minority representation. We’re both Oxbridge-educated, white, male, ex-private-schoolers, aren’t we? I think. We might well look similar.”

Ollie raises his eyebrows. “Ten points to...what college, then?

“Worcester, Oxford.” Ollie wants to scowl, but manages to keep his expression as unlined as it perpetually remains. He feels irrationally as if Toby has stolen his raîson d’être. Perhaps it’s merely a flare of friendly, casual contempt for the Other Place. “Where did you go?”

“Fitzwilliam, Cambridge,” Ollie replies, and Toby says “ah!”and smiles like he’s interested, but Ollie knows he’s thinking _isn’t that one of the shit ones? He must have been pooled_ like all the mandarins and ministers do. 1

“Did you do much stuff with the Union?” Ollie continues. “‘I was on the supplementary committee for a term, then I did ents. Made VP in my second year, treasurer in my third. Shook the then-mayor of London’s hand after he came to do a speech about the dangers of internal party conflict.”

“Yeah, I was in ours...hard to get your way to the top of these things. All those bickering tosspots and their smarming.”

“Same with the grown-ups’ world,” Ollie observes dryly, taking another gulp of his wine.

“Though OULC warmed to my dye-in-the-wool not-private-school credentials.”

“You said you went to a private school. Like probably at least what half of them did, still, but...”

“Hey, I’ve told you what I told them – I went to a Grammar school in Manchester.”

Ollie snorts. “I refuse to believe that none of them knew that The Manchester Grammar School isn’t a grammar school.”

“The chairman hadn’t been north of Cheltenham,” Toby scoffed. “Had gone to Ecuador on his gap year, though. Top-up?”

*

“Yeah. I mean, she’s an absolute nightmare, mate. Sloane bitch, daddy’s money, the full works. Not even a great lay.”

“I had one a bit like that once.” Toby says. “On the rebound from some Harrovian chap my brother knew at university. Better suited to him, I reckon. So, when you going to leave her?”

“Soon, yeah? Waiting for the right time. She’s stressed. Always snapping at me. I haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks she’s been so busy.”

“So, you playing the field? Downing free drinks from memoir launches and working your charms? Because I’ve–”

“Um, _no_ ,” Ollie says firmly. “I haven’t cheated on her. Been pretty busy myself to be honest; I’m sure you Development folk have got enough time on your hands to shag your way through all of Central Office’s receptionists–”

“I’ve cheated on my girlfriend. When I was away. Washington. You know, routine international stuff. There was this aide of Clarke’s, Liza...my girlfriend found out. I’ve got another girlfriend now.”

 _How?_ Ollie wants to say, suppressing anything worse he might want to say in addition. He settles for telling him “well done” in the most sarcastic tone he can muster.

*

If Toby’s trying to charm him into a favour, it’s all a bit obvious. Except for the fact that they’re _bickering_ , not flirting. Clearly.

The clock behind the bar says ten forty-five and their shared bottle of Pinot Grigio – bought after Ollie had ordered an identical glass for himself to the one he’d got for Toby and they’d both finished their drinks within ten minutes – lies empty.

*

“Come on,” Ollie says at last, rather tipsy by now. “Why did you speak to me? Why did you invite me here?”

“Alright,” Toby says. “OK.” He leans in conspiratorially, though they’re unlikely to be heard over all the nightspot chatter. “When my old MP was kicked upstairs, he...massaged some arms imports and exports figures a bit. To save some jobs in his constituency. Perfectly reasonable thing to do. There’s some files we made sure never got put on the electronic database. I passed those files along to DoSAC, with strict instructions to bury them. But my ex, she’s about to oversee the publishing of this report on arms manufacture that could get fucking _annihilated_ by those numbers – provided I could bundle them to the press with the implication that there’s similar mistakes out there.”

“OK,” Ollie says.

“So what I’m going to need from you,” Toby continues, looking up at Ollie through his eyelashes, “are those files. Can you get those files for me, Ollie?”

*

“This is one of the most petty escapades I’ve been involved in,” Ollie scowls, blinking at the unlit DoSAC offices with a hopeful Toby striding beside him. “She’s on _our side_. If I wasn’t at least half way to being drunk...”

“Shh!”

There are voices coming from the room they are passing, the door to which is just ajar. Familiar voices. Less annoyed-sounding than they tended to be.

“Malcolm-” Nicola says, softly yet still admirably steely-edged.

Ollie and Toby remain frozen and wide-eyed, comically so, at the meeting room door.

“No, Nic’la,” Malcolm replies. “If you insist on keeping that tosspot excuse for a man you call your husband, there’s no fuckin’ _way_ we’re...but if you were to discreetly move him out, stage a press conference-”

There is the gentle thump of someone’s back up against the wall. They’re fighting. Malcolm doesn’t hit women.

“No,” Nicola says quietly. “I won’t. I...too much drink one godawful night does not make a new father of my _children_ –”

“Right then.” There is the sound of footsteps on office carpet, and the voice getting closer. “’m off to find Jamie and ask him about that treasury fuckin’ _imbecile_ who-”

“Shit,” Ollie breathes, his skin prickling and his gaze quickly flicking over Toby’s hasty, nervous swallow. “Get in here.”

And that’s how Ollie Reeder ended up entirely legitimately frightened by the Chief Press Officer he’d just overheard, and entirely innocently dragging Toby Wright by his collar into the nearest stationary cupboard.

It’s very dark. There’s not much space for the two of them to stand in.

“I think they’ve gone now,” Toby whispers, too close to Ollie’s ear.

“Yep,” Ollie replies, and fumbles to find the handle and open the door.

It’s locked tight shut.

“Oh, this is fucking great, yes,” Ollie whispers angrily. “The F.O. are announcing their new Relations Resolution Promise at eight thirty tomorrow and I’m _stuck in a closet_. Not even metaphorically, before you even try to say-”

“The announcement’s not much,” Toby tells him smugly. “Load of rhetoric, and a rehash of that green paper from last year. Nothing new.”

“I think the minister expects me to _be there_ though, Toby. Connected and able to be contacted in this media-aware wank of an age...there’s no signal in here. You’ve succeeded in finding the one place in Whitehall that’s phone signal free.”

“I always figured Jamie McDonald had some sort of Blackberry deprivation chamber to house potential assailants...” Toby wonders idly.

“Well, yes, that does admittedly seem alarmingly likely,” Ollie agrees. The only thing from the outside world now audible is some far-distant vacuum cleaner. “How are we going to get out of here? I don’t feel too insecure in admitting that physical might isn’t really a strength for either of us.”

“What a shame that games at school was all cricket and football and never kicking doors down.”

“I think there’s a light somewhere,” Ollie says, now daring to raise his voice to its usual level. “Can you find–?”

As Ollie feels around the walls either side of him for a switch, Toby dares to lean further into him still and reach behind. Light flickers on.

“Energy saving bulb,” Ollie mutters, as some single-digit wattage barely lifts the gloom. “Oh, for the good old days. Though the other lot were in power for most of those...”

“I don’t mind it,” Toby says to him. “It’s quite romantic.”

Ollie glowers at him, but feels his skin flush further despite himself, still far too close to Toby, pressed in by pens and paper that line the walls.

“So,” Toby says. “Malcolm and Nicola Murray, MP...”

“No,” Ollie says, quite firmly. “She’d never. _He’d_ never. The man’s barely human. I mean, he must have once – that wife of his. And I guess there are those ’99 conference rumours, and that fucking weird YouTube video that’s just the shot of him at May ’97 hugging Jamie looped over and over again. But apart from that.”

Toby snorts with derisive laughter.

“Anyway. There’s not going to be anyone coming round here. We’ll have to wait until morning.”

“However shall we fill the time?” Toby says archly.

Ollie, still tipsy, cracks up. Their twinned lanky frames are far too close to being draped entirely across each other. Stupid cupboard. “You’ve joked about that too many times, now.”

He at once recognises, or at least he thinks he recognises, something close to his own techniques in flirtation being tried on him and privately wonders how the hell they can work on anyone, ever.

Nor has he ever been pursued this aggressively, and it’s been so long, so fucking long. He’s fed up of making up sexual encounters whenever Glenn asks him about his evenings out. He actually _wants_ some. Right in his eyeline are Toby’s long eyelashes, Toby’s scruffy hair. All the same; and same hands, same long neck...

“Why did we have all that wine? How did this happen? Oh God. How the fuck am I going to get those files now? You owe me, Reeder.”

“I do _not_! You’ll get kicked out of this department come morning, you know.”

“You do surprise me. Hmm,” Toby then says, “do you reckon Malcolm and Nicola have done it in here? Their children’d be half Scot, half-Surrey. What an identity crisis. If either of them are still fertile. I can’t believe I thought this midnight trip’d be worth it. Maybe that’s the one way to shut Tucker up. Kiss him. Yeah, she–”

“I’d kiss _you_ if that meant you’d _shut the fuck up_. Why-mmph!”

They’d drunk the same dry wine dry. He tastes just the same as him.

“You have a girlfriend!” Ollie says, girlishly and breathlessly, when they break apart.

Once a cheater, always a cheater, apparently.

“This definitely isn’t a good idea,” says Ollie, and then he bravely closes his eyes tight shut and starts kissing Toby’s stupid mouth right back. His hands claw at Toby’s shirt underneath his suit jacket; they knock a box of whiteboard markers to the floor in a cacophony of clattering plastic that they barely notice.

“Mhm,” Toby says, and Ollie’s eyes open again. There’s nothing soft on him to grasp onto – skin and bones, all body heat and heady interest.

Their breaths are quick as they stay entangled and start to shrug off jackets and undo each others’ shirt buttons. In a moment of false hope, Ollie wonders if there’s enough room and inclination for Toby to kneel, but Toby turns his attention to Ollie’s neck instead. Ollie instinctively grabs onto Toby harder and starts to whine with impatience.

He probably shouldn’t. They’ll be stuck in here for ages.

His breath warm against Ollie’s skin, Toby wastes no more time in unzipping Ollie’s trousers and reaching inside, pressing his hand firmly against Ollie’s arousal. Correctly reading an expectant look and a temporary pulling away of Toby’s hand on him, Ollie slides a hand below Toby’s waistband likewise and curls his fingers around him devilishly slowly.

With his free hand, Toby shoves down the waistband of Ollie’s trousers and boxers, and smirks.

“Ollie,” he says. “Who would’ve guessed you lean slightly to the right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ollie replies, still slightly breathless. “My cock’s indicative of a secret desire to eradicate new socialism. The Tory girlfriends love it. Stop- stop laughing, shut up,” Ollie replies, then swiftly kisses him again. To his pleasure, Toby’s breathing quickens.

“Hang on.” Toby shifts out of Ollie’s focus when he removes both their glasses and chucks them together onto an empty shelf. Toby shifts out of focus.

“This must make you so fucking vain,” Toby breathes, as he thrusts to try and find friction.

“Must make the both of us,” Ollie replies. “Although, I don’t know. I can’t really see you anymore.”

And then Toby takes him in hand, and Ollie reciprocates.

 _Perhaps this is closer to masturbation than sex. Friendly, common-garden masturbation,_ Ollie thinks, until he realises he’s trying to justify this madness to himself. He stops. He basically is masturbating his own cock, probably, except he swears that Toby’s is slightly thicker. (Some people get all the luck.)

“Oh fuck, _yes_ ,” he says instead. This is so fucking weird, but Jesus Toby actually knows what he’s doing. Not like Caitlin and her terrible false nails, or Charlotte and her inability to- _yeah_ , oh.

Ollie feels the heat and the pressure of long, almost familiar fingers (oh, this is definitely creepily fucking vain, and he’d stop things right now if they didn’t feel _so fucking good_ ), the sound of slickness, and tries to stop thinking about everything else except for the sensation and the excitement of not getting off alone.

“I am _not_ going to come first.” Toby says against his ear.

“Oh? Is that a bet?” Ollie barely knows what he’s saying anymore, but he’s not going down without a fight. And he employs a mean flick of the wrist.

Toby groans, clutching Ollie’s shoulder with his free hand and thrusting forward with his hips, losing the challenge, ejaculating over Ollie’s thigh and the waistband of his pushed-down trousers.

“Oh, fuck,” Ollie moans ineloquently, and covers Toby’s hand in his own release.

“Disgusting,” Toby says to him awkwardly and not entirely convincingly after a brief pause, not meeting his eyes. Ollie has a sudden desire to not put back his glasses back on, ever.

“Jesus, it smells of sex in here,” he says.

“Well it _would do_ , wouldn’t it?” Toby replies, attempting to clean himself up.

“I’ve had run-ins with the opposition that are less awkward than this.”

“Tried anal with Emma and it all went wrong?”

“You’re hardly James Bond,” Ollie sneers into the near-darkness. “You got thrown out of your own home because you didn’t keep your phone on you.”

“Hey, hey. Things I say to you whilst drunk don’t count, alright?”

“Try telling that to _Pandora_.”

*

With the aid of a cleaner and a naturally suspicious mind, Malcolm’s the one to find them in the morning – half an hour after the day’s most important announcement has been and gone, and they’re in the dark dressed in untied ties and untucked shirts.

He looks unconvinced by Ollie’s hasty fake phone conversation. “Can I just touch base with you on...” Ollie begins telling his silent touchscreen as the door to the cupboard opens, before giving up the pretence in sheer shock.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, it’s Charles and Sebastian,” Malcolm says, looking disdainfully around the ruined stationary cupboard. “I wasn’ previously aware DoSAC kept a closet full of Alan Bennett’s _wank fodder_ up here. Opposition’s flinging shit at the F.O. for rehashing their idea so, both of you, why don’t you get back to your respective regularly-scheduled fuck-ups?”

Each with an embarrassed, disgruntled sigh, they fumble around for their belongings and follow orders.

*

Later, Ollie makes to rub his forehead from lack of sleep and realises his glasses are topped with a thicker rim than normal. He’s accidently taken Toby’s.

He finds Toby’s number in his phone book, and sends a message.

 

-

1 Of course they don’t think that - he barely registers on the radar of those in seniority - but Ollie’s irrevocably convinced that they do. (Ollie _was_ [pooled](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Pool), as it happens – he sent his original application to Pembroke. He’s never quite got over the fact that Fitz wasn’t technically founded until 1966 and that its most famous alumnus is Norman Lamont.)


End file.
